**Lots of Text** You can skip down to the TLDR at the bottom if you don’t want to read it all.
Last week I had three wrist rests for sale, and to my surprise they were in very high demand. Initially I got them straight from Iomania through kant1971 (he’s a member of GH but doesn’t seem to post much anymore) but when I discussed the idea of a group order he said it wouldn’t be practical, and that no discount could be offered, except a little savings in shipping. It wasn’t a whole lot cheaper this way but I ordered a few units to see if they were worth proxying. I ended up liking the thing a lot, and it seems to have sparked the interest of quite a few GH'ers and OCN members.
I decided to organize a group order and was able to figure out some estimates. Since I will be using a personal proxy, we will have some extra fees to take care of. He’s a proxy from Korea through another friend, so we’re paying mostly for his time, and less so for the service. He will order from Iomania, and ship to us. It’s not the most efficient way of doing it, but I have yet to find another alternative. With that said, these will still be significantly cheaper than any other source you can currently get them for in the United States.
You‘d normally have to pay $70 plus for a single unit. This group buy only works because it is discounting the main issue with getting these wrist rests: the shipping cost. If you check on Iomania, these are only $17 (USD) , or roughly $25 after shipping within Korea. But shipping it outside of Korea can cost over $70-80 for one unit. Pretty much defeats the purpose of it. I'm going to offer both the TKL and Full size models, as far as I know nothing else exists (i.e. poker/hhkb compatible variants, other colors).
Here would be the price structure for the TKL model (full size is a few dollars more):
1 unit @ $ 68 (base price reference)
5 units @ $48 each
10 units @ $40 each
20 units @ $35 each <--- target goal
40 units @ $32 each
** sorry, meant to say this doesn't include the proxy fee. I've estimated that to be between $2-4 per unit depending on the actual total **
This include the base price of each unit ($17), domestic shipping within Korea, shipping from Korea to me. It doesn’t include domestic shipping from me to you or the yet to be determined proxy fee so expect to add about $10-15 dollars to these prices for the final total. Because of the weight/dimensions of these wrist rests (anyone that owns one can attest to how heavy they are), anything past 20-40 units the price will remain relatively the same. The main purpose of this group buy is to mitigate the costs of shipping, and not trying to discount the already low price of the wrist rests themselves. I've only negotiated for 20-40 units with my proxy as ideal. I don't see prices changing unless we get to 60-100+ units, at which point it might cost even more because that would be a lot of work on my proxy's end. But we'll worry about that if we get there.
Now for the problems we might have:Kant1971 said I might get hit by import fees. For the four that I initially ordered, he estimated the fee to be about $25, but nothing showed up for me. Anyone know what might happen if 20-40 of these show up at my place? It would obviously be a problem if I have to end up paying $200-300 in fees.
Possible alternative sources for these? Keyboardco has very limited tock and won’t do a group buy, neither will Iomania directly. Can anyone help me contact the manufacture and see if we can work out something cheaper? I would ask my proxy but it’s not exactly his responsibility.
How do you guys suggest I ship these out domestically? How do you guys ship out Full-size keyboards? These come in a box that is the exact shape as the wrist rests themselves, but both the TKL and full size come in the same box (same length). The few that I have sent out this past week have had varying shipping costs depending on their location in the U.S. (between $6-11). Shipping them in their original box probably wouldn't be safe since there's no cushion or packaging within them. And finding boxes that are the right length / dimension seems really hard.
Anything else?
TLDRMilestone wrist rest group buy.
$40-50 each (probably).
TKL or Full size models through personal proxy form Korea who will order from Iomania directly.
Issues with import taxes / cheaper alternatives / domestic shipping. Help!
If you need more reference for these check out these threads:
http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Island:28460http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?28673-A-bunch-of-new-stuff-Milestone-TKL-wristrest-amp-the-upcoming-KMAC&p=553883&viewfull=1#post553883 
